Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) based on inorganic semiconductors (e.g. AlGaAs) have been developed since the mid-80's (S. Kinoshita et al., IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. QE-23, No. 6, June 1987). They have reached the point where AlGaAs-based VCSELs emitting at 850 nm are manufactured by a number of companies and have lifetimes beyond 100 years (K. D. Choquette et al., Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 85, No. 11, November 1997). With the success of these near-infrared lasers, attention in recent years has turned to other inorganic material systems to produce VCSELs capable of emitting in the visible wavelength range (C. Wilmsen et al., Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001). There are many potential applications for visible lasers, such as, displays, optical storage reading and writing, laser printing, and short-haul telecommunications employing plastic optical fibers (T. Ishigure et al., Electronics Letters, Vol. 31, No. 6, Mar. 16, 1995). In spite of the worldwide efforts of many industrial and academic laboratories, much work remains to create viable laser diodes (either edge emitters or VCSELs) capable of producing light output that spans the visible spectrum.
In an effort to produce visible wavelength VCSELs, it would be advantageous to abandon inorganic-based systems and focus on organic-based laser systems; since organic-based gain materials can enjoy a number of advantages over inorganic-based gain materials in the visible spectrum. For example, typical organic-based gain materials have the properties of low unpumped scattering/absorption losses and high quantum efficiencies. In comparison to inorganic laser systems, organic lasers are relatively inexpensive to manufacture, can emit over the entire visible range, can be scaled to arbitrary size, and most importantly, are able to emit multiple wavelengths (such as red, green, and blue) from a single chip. Over the past number of years, there has been increasing interest in making organic-based solid-state lasers. The laser gain material has been either polymeric or small molecule and a number of different resonant cavity structures were employed, such as, microcavity (Kozlov et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,160,828 issued Dec. 12, 2000), wave guide, ring microlasers, and distributed feedback (see also, for instance, G. Kranzelbinder et al., Rep. Prog. Phys. 63, 2000, and Diaz-Garcia et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,881,083 issued Mar. 9, 1999). A problem with all of these structures is that in order to achieve lasing it was necessary to excite the cavities by optical pumping using another laser source. It is much preferred to electrically pump the laser cavities since this generally results in more compact and easier to modulate structures.
A main barrier to achieving electrically pumped organic lasers is the small carrier mobility of organic material, which is typically on the order of 10−5 cm2/(V-s). This low carrier mobility results in a number of problems. Devices with low carrier mobilities are typically restricted to using thin layers in order to avoid large voltage drops and ohmic heating. These thin layers result in the lasing mode penetrating into the lossy cathode and anode, which causes a large increase in the lasing threshold (V. G. Kozlov et al., Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 84, No. 8, Oct. 15, 1998). Since electron-hole recombination in organic materials is governed by Langevin recombination (whose rate scales as the carrier mobility), low carrier mobilities result in orders of magnitude having more charge carriers than singlet excitations; one of the consequences of this is that charge-induced (polaron) absorption can become a significant loss mechanism (N. Tessler et al., Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 74, No. 19, May 10, 1999). Assuming laser devices have a 5% internal quantum efficiency, using the lowest reported lasing threshold to date of ˜100 W/cm2 (M. Berggren et al., Letters To Nature, Vol. 389, Oct. 2, 1997), and ignoring the above mentioned loss mechanisms, would put a lower limit on the electrically-pumped lasing threshold of 1000 A/cm2. Including these loss mechanisms would place the lasing threshold well above 1000 A/cm2, which to date is the highest reported current density, which can be supported by organic devices (N. Tessler, Advanced Materials 1998, 10, No. 1).
An alternative to electrical pumping for organic lasers is optical pumping by incoherent light sources, such as, light emitting diodes (LEDs), either inorganic (M. D. McGehee et al. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 72, No. 13, Mar. 30, 1998) or organic (Berggren et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,881,089 issued Mar. 9, 1999). This possibility is the result of unpumped organic laser systems having greatly reduced combined scattering and absorption losses (˜0.5 cm−1) at the lasing wavelength, especially when one employs a host-dopant combination as the active media. Even taking advantage of these small losses, the smallest reported optically pumped threshold for organic lasers to date is 100 W/cm2 based on a wave guide laser design (M. Berggren et al., Letters To Nature Vol. 389, Oct. 2, 1997). Since off-the-shelf inorganic LEDs can only provide up to ˜20 W/cm2 of power density, it is necessary to take a different route to avail of optically pumping by incoherent sources. Additionally, in order to lower the lasing threshold, it is necessary to choose a laser structure, which minimizes the gain volume; a VCSEL-based organic microcavity laser satisfies this criterion. Using VCSEL-based organic laser cavities should enable optically pumped power density thresholds below 5 W/cm2. As a result practical organic laser devices can be driven by optically pumping them with a variety of readily available, incoherent light sources, such as LEDs.
A disadvantage to the above described use of LEDs as an optical pumping means is that the LEDs are incorporated as an integral part of the organic cavity laser device. Therefore, the LED alignment is difficult to accomplish and not readily changeable, if aligned incorrectly.
What is needed is a convenient way of attaching and dynamically aligning an organic cavity laser device to an incoherent light source.